SL new user retention, expectation and usability

[Coffee Pancake]

A comment in a different thread got me thinking and it feels like this is something worth talking about.

 

SL has always had a shockingly low retention. Signups out the wazzoo, people staying .. not so much. Millions of signups. 50K Online at best.

The blame has always been placed on the new user experience.

We're just not showing the newbies the right combination of things to make them stay forever, maybe the starter avatars are bad, maybe the helpers are bad, maybe it's the parrot. Nothing LL have ever done has appreciably moved the dial. I've joked before they could drop new accounts straight into a volcano and it would have no impact on the numbers.

While there will always be scope for improving the new user experience and onboarding, and there can always be better starter avatars and better information, more to do, more people to see, more life and activity, this is not the aspect of the new user experience I want to cover in this thread.

 

What I want to talk about is new user expectation and usability.

Sources of failure that occur in the first few minutes, long before the user has realized the starter avatars aren't socially viable, or that they are going to need a pile of cash, etc. The kind of things we (and LL) completely miss simply because we have overcome the hump and don't see it anymore.

When people start a new thing, be it some social platform like SL, a new game or even a new book, there bring some common expectations. If the thing doesn't meet those expectations in the first (say) 10 minutes the user will decide this isn't what they thought it was and move on. Like if you swapped the covers of a sci-fi and romance novel .. a chapter in and most are likely done. They might not be able to put their finger on exactly why they are done, just that this (whatever this is) isn't right. 

SL is broad and covers a tremendous amount of ground, it's impossible for someone to show up and after an hour have decided the content (or lack thereof) is the problem. Even if we magically get them to the perfect content inside the first 10 minutes, they likely wont appreciate it lacking the wider social context, not see the wood for the trees and leave for entirely different reasons.

 

I seriously think what we have is a more fundamental usability problem.

SL does things the way SL does things because that's how SL has always done things .. what if we're doing it all wrong.

What are we screwing up in a new users first 10 minutes.

Do they press W to walk forward, type wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww in chat and freak out? Do they seen an avatar, fall face first into the uncanny valley, and are subconsciously biased from that moment on? Does the lack of smoothness and a hint of jank put them off? Do they have an immediate "how do I" question and then just give up?

[Eirynne Sieyes]

"Yes" to all of the above. I could barely walk. What kept me in back then was a very interesting person I met.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

When new users see that an Nvidia 9800 card is sufficient for SL and find out after the fact that the list of video cards is 12 years old...

[Lindal Kidd]

• Lag (SL is inherently a lot slower than the games they're used to)
• Odd controls (several veteran gamers have complained to me that the controls don't work as they expect)
• Ugly, non-editable starter avatars. (Hopefully, NUX will fix this)
• Time and effort required. For anything, but as an example, a lot of the new male avatars want to know how they can have sex. When they find out they have to get a male appendage, get a better looking avatar, learn how to use chat emotes and scripted furniture, AND find a willing partner, they give up. Maybe if there was a Newbie Sex Hotel staffed with bots....?
• Money. We keep telling newcomers "use the freebies!" but they want it all, right now. Nice clothes, a home, a car, and most are unwilling to spend a lot of time searching for free stuff or spend actual money buying L$. Maybe LL could offer a free one-month Premium trial subscription and a suitcase full of clothes and accessories. Then, after the newbie has seen what SL is like, they'd be more likely to decide to start paying for that subscription.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Maybe if there was a Newbie Sex Hotel staffed with bots....?

😳

[Coffee Pancake]

I think by the time a new user has discovered that both bots and sex hotels are a thing, we're waaaay past failing in the first 10 minutes, we're just grumpy and disappointed.

[Rowan Amore]

12 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Time and effort required

That right there is and always will be what makes people not come back.

I've said it before, I came to SL.with absolutely NO gaming experience or expectations.   I didn't care that my avatar didn't look as good as others.  I didn't feel.a need to 'fit in'.   I learned how things worked mostly on my own.  It probably took me at least 6 months before I bought my first Lindens.  I found a place to hang out where no one really cared what other people looked like.  When I did start wanting to update things, people I'd met there helped me out.

Instant gratification.   That's what is lacking for new people and there really is no way for LL or anyone to fix that.  

[Seicher Rae]

23 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

• Maybe if there was a Newbie Sex Hotel staffed with bots....?

Wait.

You mean there isn't one?

Well, that explains a few things. All this time...

[LittleMe Jewell]

For the folks coming here to check out the "game", I think the lack of any gaming objectives confuses them.

For those that come for the social experience, there is both too little and too much.  Because LL wants to be careful in directing people to specific venues, often the new user is getting too little direction in the beginning.  Due to the vastness of SL, it can sometimes be quite frustrating trying to find places that are actually alive with people and where those people truly share interests with you.  The tighter your search criteria, the smaller the chance of finding places with people.  The more general your search criteria, the larger the chance of finding places filled with people that just want to grief newbies.  

 

And yes, as Rowen mentions, these days it does seem that many people want the instant gratification.  That's what they want in RL and it is what they want here.

Edited August 15, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Charalyne Blackwood]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

For the folks coming here to check out the "game", I think the lack of any gaming objectives confuses them.

For those that come for the social experience, there is both too little and too much.  Because LL wants to be careful in directing people to specific venues, often the new user is getting too little direction in the beginning.  Due to the vastness of SL, it can sometimes be quite frustrating trying to find places that are actually alive with people and where those people truly share interests with you.  The tighter your search criteria, the smaller the chance of finding places with people.  The more general your search criteria, the larger the chance of finding places filled with people that just want to grief newbies.  

Previous incursions into SL and my present avatar have arrived at the same conclusion as far as searching for places where I might fit in: uugghhaaahhhplotz. 90% of my time is spent on my home platform fiddlin with adjustments and taking pics.

[Persephone Emerald]

27 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

•  
• Time and effort required. For anything, but as an example, a lot of the new male avatars want to know how they can have sex. When they find out they have to get a male appendage, get a better looking avatar, learn how to use chat emotes and scripted furniture, AND find a willing partner, they give up. Maybe if there was a Newbie Sex Hotel staffed with bots....?
•  

Isn't that what AFK places are?

[Seicher Rae]

I find this a fascinating question, and I have no real clue (so what else is new), especially since you stated what you did NOT want to discuss. (My contribution to that would be: The incredibly steep learning curve and the fact that helpful information is spread all over the place, after 13 years I STILL have trouble finding answers. But that's not what we're discussing...)

I don't know if this factors in or not, but when I talk to people, and I happen to mention Second Life... no one has heard of it. I'm talking age ranges from 20s to 70s. Granted, this is casual conversation, not a scientific study, and my numbers are low, but like... no one has heard of it. Not even "oh? is that still around?"

Add to that, things like CGI in movies, things like Ready Player One, things like the opening splash page of SL itself with the glossy, high rez, totally not what you see in world images.

People either coming in with little to no expectations, who don't see things to click like in a game, who wonder "huh?" or the people who think "whoa this is gonna be just like in the movies" and wonder "huh?"

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Avocado toast. SL needs more avocado toast.

That'll keep 'em coming back.

 🥑 

[Coffee Pancake]

26 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I find this a fascinating question, and I have no real clue (so what else is new), especially since you stated what you did NOT want to discuss. (My contribution to that would be: The incredibly steep learning curve and the fact that helpful information is spread all over the place, after 13 years I STILL have trouble finding answers. But that's not what we're discussing...)

This is the thing, we made it over the hump .. statistically, we're a tiny minority and if there are common threads to what helped us, it's most often "I had a friend".

That's my excuse .. I had joined SL, paid the $10 fee, and bailed after my first session, I don't even remember the name of my account or why I bailed .. something something garbage guess I just wasted a tenner. 

The next time I came to SL, there was a friend waiting to TP me away from newbie island and into group gambling (Yahtzee with a pot for the winner), I came back the next day and fell right down the rabbit hole.

26 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I don't know if this factors in or not, but when I talk to people, and I happen to mention Second Life... no one has heard of it. I'm talking age ranges from 20s to 70s. Granted, this is casual conversation, not a scientific study, and my numbers are low, but like... no one has heard of it. Not even "oh? is that still around?"

My experience has been that people either haven't heard of it, or they deny / don't want to talk about it because they came for the sex.

26 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

People either coming in with little to no expectations, who don't see things to click like in a game, who wonder "huh?" or the people who think "whoa this is gonna be just like in the movies" and wonder "huh?"

Yeah, I agree that opening SL and expecting RPO is going to be a crushing let down .. probably well inside the 10 minute window.

The blue woman on the website is perhaps inspired by a movie search term that used to drive a lot of traffic to SL signups, people looking for "Avatar" .. Searching for that, finding SL, yeah that's probably a 10 minute crash and burn too.

[Seicher Rae]

22 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Avocado toast. SL needs more avocado toast.

That'll keep 'em coming back.

 🥑 

Having just polished off a small container of guacamole (hey, the chips were healthily home baked!), I can attest that the avocado would keep me around for a while. However, I may report your post as having a thinly veiled millennial-bashing theme to it, and I'm offended.

[Seicher Rae]

6 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

My experience has been that people either haven't heard of it, or they deny / don't want to talk about it because they came for the sex.

When I brought up SL something like 5-7+ years ago (I'm horrible with time ranges, it is a bit of denial I use), I would get either the "never heard of it" or "haha! isn't that the game for computer sex?" To which I would huffily reply that sure, a small percentage of people do that, but it is all about building and exploring and art and socializing all over the world and music and... all the while keeping silent about my BDSM connection in SL.   However, I digress... but now, it isn't even the snicker about the "computer sex game." It is flat out, no one has heard of it.

Every time I get that reaction, I just go, "Oh, ok" and drop it. Then I think, "Gosh, I'd bet LL's marketing team would be thrilled to know that here's another one."

[Arielle Popstar]

Well we've had this debate before but still convinced that the number one factor for low user retention is that godforsaken mess called an "inventory" UI. At least for us older ones we had the benefit of different icons for the different clothing parts like pants, skirt, shirt etc but nowadays everything is just an object icon necessitating the reading of each often unintelligible naming convention for different parts of an outfit. Thank heavens I am fluent in english and read fairly fast because for those whose primary language is not english, it must be an even bigger source of frustration having to sort out the proper items. Why oh why do we not have a graphically based inventory?

Then look at shopping. What a freaking mess. Aside from all the buyer beware aspects talked about elsewhere, there is the various and differing paths we need for buying, unpacking, wearing just a demo. Then having to find the full version of the same item if I actually want to buy it. 20 freaking clicks to go from getting the demo to buying the and putting on the full version for each purchase.

It really is no wonder to me that there is no new user retention for this alone. The ones that do stay are really just sadomasochists with a high pain and frustration threshold.

[Coffee Pancake]

12 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

...

 

Inventory and shopping happen well after the "first 10 minutes", my post, this thread and position is that we loose people long before they discover how convoluted playing dress up is.

New user logs into SL, Oh wow .. this is not for me, leaves. What went wrong.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

Inventory and shopping happen well after the "first 10 minutes", my post, this thread and position is that we loose people long before they discover how convoluted playing dress up is.

New user logs into SL, Oh wow .. this is not for me, leaves. What went wrong.

Within 10 minutes myself and many others were looking how to modify the default avatar. That is of course if one can even find the inventory to begin with.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

34 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

However, I may report your post as having a thinly veiled millennial-bashing theme to it, and I'm offended.

Au contraire, madam. I was slightly mocking the veiled criticisms of those who have suggested that new users (by which I think young 'uns is at least implied) require instant gratification. 

I don't think that's any more true now than it has ever been, actually.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Within 10 minutes myself and many others were looking how to modify the default avatar. That is of course if one can even find the inventory to begin with.

Yes, but you're here .. grumbling, but still here. inventory and shopping we're not a sufficient barrier to entry.

We're talking about the people who aren't here and we can't just presume they're too dumdum to figure it out given a little motivation.

[Seicher Rae]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Au contraire, madam. I was slightly mocking the veiled criticisms of those who have suggested that new users (by which I think young 'uns is at least implied) require instant gratification. 

I don't think that's any more true now than it has ever been, actually.

/me nods I was 12 when I started SL 13 years ago, and my attention span was long enough to keep me here. I was looking for The Sims. (That's kinda true.)

[Persephone Emerald]

44 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Having just polished off a small container of guacamole (hey, the chips were healthily home baked!), I can attest that the avocado would keep me around for a while. However, I may report your post as having a thinly veiled millennial-bashing theme to it, and I'm offended.

Hey, I'm nowhere near being a millennial, and I love avocados - toast or no toast.

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Yes, but you're here .. grumbling, but still here. inventory and shopping we're not a sufficient barrier to entry.

We're talking about the people who aren't here and we can't just presume they're too dumdum to figure it out given a little motivation.

I'm here because I was highly motivated at the time. (working *****es!) Inventory and avatar dressing challenges in comparison to other games like Imvu, came very close to me giving it up anyway. Spent a number of years meeting and greeting fresh arrivals in Osgrids Lbsa plaza, so also pretty familiar with the stated challenges of 100's of new people. May I point out that you have brought this topic up a number of times just in the few odd years I been here and each time you reject what is so plainly the problem and still look for it being something else then it is. Don't they call that denialism?

[Coffee Pancake]

If someone is struggling and trying, we have them .. they are likely going to stay. Please. Take your "i want a pictorial inventory but have no idea how it can work with SL conceptually" to it's own thread and hammer out the details of exactly how it's going to work. 

Please Arielle, read the OP. This is not a repeat of the usual threads. Stop trying to make it one.

First impressions. Failure of  expectations. Usability or accessibility show stoppers. 10 minutes and gone.